


No Direction Home

by Riona



Category: Exit/Corners (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: Beyond the Exit, it's hard to tell what's real.
Relationships: Ink Greer & Aether Irving
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	No Direction Home

There’s nothing beyond the Exit, just as Tiana said. A kind of void. It’s not exactly a welcoming landscape.

But at least Sean’s not out here. You could not pay Ink to go back inside that hotel.

He sits down on the nothingness when he thinks he’s run far enough. The window into the hotel is too far away to be seen, no matter how carefully he scans the horizon. Anyone who came after him wouldn’t know which direction to start looking, unless they can track him out here.

Aether stays standing, her eyes blank.

Is time passing normally out in the real world? If Ink just stays here, will his body starve to death in a few days? Or could he stay in here forever?

He coughs blood into his hand. Is _that_ going to kill him, or can he believe enough blood into himself to survive any amount of haemorrhaging? Beth was amazed that Rae could still walk around after having his arm cut off.

They were communicating with their Contacts in real time, weren’t they?

That’s it, then. No ‘a few days outside, a lifetime in here’ consolation. Time is still ticking past for him. If he stays in here, he dies, and soon.

But what’s the alternative? Seek out Sean, die even sooner? Ink’s a witness to attempted murder, actual murder, abduction; is he supposed to believe these people would just let him go?

They designed this game to goad the Contestants into suicide. Ink won’t give them the satisfaction. Maybe he only has days left, but he’s going to live them.

-

There’s not much to do, out here in the void. He wishes he could talk to Aether.

Sometimes it looks like she’s about to say something.

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

He’s been trying to talk to the voice in his head. No luck there, either.

He could play around with the simulation, he guesses.

Ink closes his eyes and pictures himself, believes as hard as he can. Opens his eyes and checks under his shirt. He hasn’t looked since he woke up in Exit/Corners.

The scar on his chest is gone.

He can change his appearance at will here, turns out. That’s a trick that would have been useful a while back.

But Aether thought that guys with scars were hot.

She was probably just trying to make him feel better. Can she find anything hot, really? She isn’t human.

He puts the scar back where it was.

-

He’s losing his mind. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here in the nothingness, just reading Beth’s letter to Nolan Thatcher, over and over again.

The letter to Liza is still in its envelope, unopened. It doesn’t feel like his business.

He keeps looking at Aether. Her blank eyes, her bloodied throat. It feels so wrong to see her like this after getting to know that shy, smart girl.

He stands up and gently pulls Aether’s hood over her head.

He doesn’t know if it’ll make a difference. It probably doesn’t make sense. But a part of him can’t help feeling that maybe, somehow, it’ll change things.

And maybe that’s why it does.

Aether blinks, her eyes clearing.

Ink tenses up. “Aether?”

She shakes her head. Tugs at her hair, bites her lip. She was a kind of nothingness, blank space in the shape of a girl, and now he’s watching her come to life again.

They stare at each other for a long, long moment.

“W-well,” Aether says, eventually, “this is awkward.”

It’s not funny, really, but Ink laughs so hard he can blame his tears on it.

-

She looks like Aether, although her glasses and muffler are gone. She speaks like Aether; she has the same body language. Or at least her body language matches up with the way Ink remembers her.

Things have changed, though, for both of them.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asks, softly. “I’m not real.”

“Are you the Aether I knew?” Ink asks. “Or are you a blank slate reshaping itself into the way I remember Aether?”

Aether seems to shrink into her hood. “I – I don’t know.”

Ink’s not sure what the difference would even mean. These are philosophical questions he doesn’t feel able to answer.

Maybe whether Aether feels there’s a difference is what matters here.

“I’m asking pretty insensitive questions, aren’t I?” Ink asks. “Sorry. Let’s try this again: how are you feeling?”

Aether touches her fingers to her neck. Ink’s afraid, for a moment, but then Aether drops her hand again.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Um. Upset, I think.”

Ink surprises himself by letting out a small, worn-out laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.” He pauses. “I’m sorry. There were some rough revelations in that room, but I think you had the worst one.”

Aether swallows. It seems like such a human thing to do. “I don’t feel like a machine. It’s hard to believe my body’s not... out there, in the real world.”

It seems strange to talk about feelings with an AI. Does she really feel things?

Sent _believed_ he was in love with Ink, enough to put himself in danger for Ink’s sake. Maybe human belief isn’t the only kind that makes things real here.

Aether’s eyes widen slightly. “You should be there. In the real world, I mean. Why are you still here?”

“How am I supposed to get back there?” Ink asks. “I don’t know how to... log out, or whatever. It’s not like I can trust Sean to help me.”

“I think Sean and Tiana really would let you go,” Aether says. “You know, if you went back.”

Ink stares at her. “Really?”

She nods.

If that’s what Aether thinks, she’s probably right. She’s a part of this simulation; she knows things about the minds of people inside it. There might be a chance for Ink to get out and keep living.

It sounds better than waiting to die in an empty void, if he’s honest.

“I’d be leaving you alone, wouldn’t I?” Ink asks.

“It’s all right,” Aether says. “I’m – I’m not scared.”

Of course she’s scared. Ink can’t believe that she wouldn’t be.

He doesn’t want to die. But he doesn’t want to abandon her, either.

Ink sits down on the floor and tilts his head back. Stares up into the nothingness in place of a sky.

“Did we really break out of the game?” he asks.

“What do you mean?” Aether asks.

“I don’t know,” Ink says. “Maybe this is my Corner. Maybe this is me making the decision to die here, just like they wanted.”

He hacks more blood into his hand. Flicks his arm out to scatter drops across the invisible floor, just to add a little visual interest to this place.

He doesn’t want to sacrifice himself just to get some assholes more funding.

But then there’s Aether.

“I think you should go,” Aether says.

“You’re probably right,” Ink says.

He pillows his coat under his head and shoulders, lies down on his side. Closes his eyes.

Maybe they’ll find him while he’s napping. Maybe this decision is going to be made for him.

-

He dreams that he’s in Beth’s garden. He asks Beth what he should do, and she tells him it’s his decision. She asks if he’ll visit her, and he promises that he will, they all will, they’re her family now.

When he wakes, he’s not surrounded by the void any more. It’s Beth’s garden, repeated endlessly, stretching all the way to the perfectly even horizon.

Aether is standing over him.

“Are you all right?” she asks in Beth’s voice.

Ink tries to press himself into the grass underneath him, suddenly terrified.

“Ink?” she asks, and it’s Aether again, and—

He forgot, for a moment. He forgot that she was an AI.

How much of her is shaped by him? If he forgets who she is, does she stop being herself?

It feels like he has a responsibility to hold on to Aether’s personality and appearance and voice in his mind, to give her some sort of consistent identity. Letting his thoughts of Beth change who Aether is – it feels like he’s harming Aether, like he’s disrespecting Beth.

He climbs to his feet, looks around at the gardens and gardens and gardens. He has to put a hand on the trunk of a maple to steady himself.

He’s feeling weak. Is that the state of his body outside, being reflected in here? Or is the condition of his body in the simulation a completely separate thing?

“You put this here, didn’t you?” Aether asks, gesturing at the greenery surrounding them.

“I guess so,” Ink says. “I was dreaming about it. I’m awake now, right?”

Aether shrugs, looking helpless. “I think so. I don’t know if I know what _awake_ means any more.”

Whatever’s above them is a perfectly blank, even blue. It feels close, oppressive, more like a ceiling than a sky. It seems like he should be able to reach up and touch it, but there’s no resistance when he tries.

There’s a little stream nearby, branching and flowing through all the repetitions of the garden. The sound of running water really makes Ink realise how _silent_ it was out here before.

He crouches beside it and scoops up some water in his hands. He doesn’t know if it’s safe to drink, but it probably doesn’t make much difference at this point.

The water is cool and clear, and he feels better for having drunk it. But it isn’t real.

“You should leave,” Aether says.

“I could stay,” Ink says. “The surroundings are a lot nicer now, at least.”

Until the next time he wakes up from a nightmare, he guesses.

“Sean and Tiana have probably left, anyway,” he says. “It’s not like I know how to get out by myself.”

Aether twists her hands together, hesitant. “I don’t think they have.”

A hunch? “Why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t think they can,” Aether says. “I don’t think anyone can leave if someone’s still alive in the simulation.”

Ink stares at her.

“Everyone’s still _here?_ ” he demands. “Rae and Liza? Or... did Sean do something to them?”

The last time he saw Rae and Liza, they were heading for the exit while Ink went to find Aether. At the time, Ink had thought the Four Elements Hotel was a real place, something they could actually get _out_ of. It hadn’t really hit him until now: the exit would have led out into a void for them as well. They couldn’t have escaped.

Aether closes her eyes. “They’re alive.”

It’s a strange mixture of relief and horror. “And you’d only know that if they were still here.”

Ink could stay here and starve. But he’d potentially be killing every other person in here, unless he died first. Four people.

A part of him is glad that the decision’s been taken out of his hands, that he _has_ to leave Aether and live. Is that a selfish thing to feel?

“We have to get back to the hotel,” he says. He means _I_ , really, rather than _we_. But he’s not ready to let go of Aether yet.

Aether smiles, a little shakily. “I think that’s the best decision.”

Ink looks around.

Only the garden, endless. He has no idea where the window into the hotel is.

All he’d been able to think about was getting away from the Four Elements. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might have to go _back_.

-

He starts taking quick naps, here and there. A few minutes at a time, or that’s what it feels like. It’s the only way he can keep up the search.

Aether never seems to need to sleep. He guesses that makes sense.

He keeps waking up in the places he dreams about. His dorm room. Liza’s Corner. Bellbridge Books, before it burned down. Bellbridge Books while it was burning.

He has to stop dreaming of places with walls. It makes the search so much harder. He’s trying to turn this place back into the void, that huge black expanse with nothing to see apart from the hotel window and Aether.

He wakes in Rae’s Corner with Rae shaking him.

“ _Finally_ ,” Rae hisses. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I am _not_ staying in this place. Fuck.”

Ink jolts upright. “Rae?”

“Wow, you remembered my name,” Rae says, with a kind of frantic sarcasm. He keeps glancing at the machine that took his arm. “Come on, let’s track down those dicks and get out of this hellhole.”

“I’m trying,” Ink says. “How did you find me? Do you know the wa—”

Wait.

“Your arm’s back,” Ink says.

Rae glances down at his hands. Looks up at Ink, confusion overtaking his terror. “I...”

Did Rae forget he’d lost his arm, believe it back? It seems hard to accept that that’s something Rae would ever _forget_.

And something else is wrong. Something is missing. Some _one_.

“Oh, God.” Rae presses both of his hands over his mouth. It’s a gesture that looks very unlike Rae, somehow.

“You’re not Rae,” Ink says, softly.

Rae is shaking. “No.”

Ink was dreaming about Rae, Rae’s Corner, Rae’s screaming, and...

Ink takes a step forward and hugs Rae. Closes his eyes and focuses as hard as he can, holding Rae to him.

When he opens his eyes, it’s Aether in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Aether says. She’s almost in tears. “I wasn’t trying to trick you. I really thought I was—”

“It’s okay,” Ink says.

Her shaking is getting worse. “God, who am I? What am I?”

“You’re Aether,” Ink says. “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

-

More searching. More sleeping.

When your dreams follow you into your waking life, it can be hard to tell whether you’re dreaming or awake.

He’s trying to keep Aether a consistent person, not to force her into thinking she’s anyone else. He doesn’t always manage it. He’s wrecking her sense of identity, if she has one, and it’s making him feel sick with guilt.

-

People keep telling him this is reality.

He doesn’t believe them. The room he ‘woke up’ in looked exactly like the pod room from the simulation. It just seems too convenient.

Nolan Thatcher looks like the sort of guy Ink would picture as Beth’s asshole rich son. He says Ink crashed the simulation. Wandered too far from the origin point.

It’s exactly the kind of vaguely computery bullshit Ink’s subconscious might make up.

They can tell him all they like. He knows he’s dreaming. Or, if he’s not dreaming, he’s still in the simulation, and he owes Aether a serious apology for making her into _that_ guy.

Rae and Liza say they’re worried about him, they want to keep an eye on him. He lets them come with him when he leaves. He guesses it doesn’t make a difference; they’re not real.

Probably a dream, rather than CORNERS. He hasn’t been coughing up blood here, and Aether can only be one person at a time. But he can’t rule out his mind being in such a bad state that he’s hallucinating entire new people into the simulation.

“Can we get something to eat?” Liza asks. “I’m starving.”

In the real world, she’s literally starving. She’s starving to death, and it’s Ink’s fault.

In this fake world, whatever kind of fake it is, Ink says, “Sure.”

It’s a direction to walk in, after all. Maybe he’ll find the window into the hotel.

He’ll find his way back to reality. He just has to keep looking.


End file.
